


tea for the canary

by eggwriter



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Slight worldbuilding, Talking, completely platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 09:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20543807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggwriter/pseuds/eggwriter
Summary: "Miss Eurydice," the king of hell says, "join me for tea."What happens after, when the lovers have failed and the underworld is restless.





	tea for the canary

**Author's Note:**

> This began as thinking about what would happen after the plot of Hadestown, and now here we are! Eurydice-centric, exploring dynamics and how the world has changed, and how the characters themselves have changed. Also opportunity for me to write Eurydice and Hades interacting.

When the work becomes less harsh, the tenants of Hell aren’t sure why.

Everyone has their ideas and their reasoning: Has the old king’s heart truly been warmed by the song of the boy and his lost lover? Maybe it is a realization? A realization that he is outnumbered, a realization that now that hope has been restored to the workers they could turn against him and send his kingdom of fire and metal into despair.

Irregardless, the workers appreciate it. It is by no means kind, but for some reason it is more bearable. There is hope that has been stoked in their bellies, a now more solid belief in that this is not the end of all things.

There is an unexpected camaraderie to be found in the mines. Eurydice encounters men and women so worn by grime that they barely look human, lungs so filled with soot and dust that they can barely speak, and all of them treat her with a gruff and quiet kindness. When a man falls, his fellow men lift him back up. There are no lies and there is no betrayal, the foremen are kept outside of every secret and never told anything.

“Now ’s more like it used to be,” a one eyed worker informs Eurydice, grinning wildly and showcasing a few tin teeth. “Do y’feel it? It’s changin’.”

Even the singing has changed. One Wednesday morning, as Eurydice begins her shift, the entire underworld comes to a halt when an echoing song suddenly breaks out miles away and enthralls them all.

Between basins the size of houses and cogs like ferris wheels, they see workers walk with lanterns in hand and sing. It is the most somber yet beautiful choir any of them have ever heard and in a language none of them recognize, with the brightest tones and the lowest tones carrying the furthest.

It only lasted a few minutes, echoing throughout the stone halls of hell, but it is enough to put a considerable dent into the day’s work.

The songs are different after that. In the endless cave they work in, there is a song at least once a day, and the foremen soon give up on trying to stop it. If one song is quietened, another rises. Eurydice finds that the song helps her remember who she is and what she has lost. With a different song each day, the days don’t bleed into one another as much; she starts being able to tell every fire- and stone-colored day apart.

Even in this brutalist metal hell, there is beauty to be found in more than the singing: The workers who can afford it visit the speakeasies that have been blessed by Persephone. Occasionally Eurydice finds empty buildings made out of black rock lit up only by false suns. In the less traversed districts, nearby the wall, there is even _greenery: _abandoned factories covered in moss, pipes thick as oak trees adorned in rust and vines.

There are cracks in the wall where real light enters. The few hours before the cracks are found and sealed up are enough for nature to seek precious sun. A worker brings a fistful of grass for his fellow men to look at and smell, and it makes them all dream of a better morning.

One day a woman arrives and causes chaos and excitement in the barracks. She’s covered red and copper dust, slick with sweat and her muscular bare chest heaves as she gasps for air. There is a satchel on her hip and she happily drinks when handed a pail of water, pulling letters out of her bag and handing them to the workers as they all call for names of the recipients. _A courier_, someone informs; brave souls that fly across and into the world itself to carry out messages.

“For you,” she tells Eurydice and in her large red hand there is a crumpled letter. “It’s from mister Hermes himself. On behalf of yer’ husband.”

Eurydice nearly kisses her in gratitude, pressing the letter tight against her chest and telling the woman ‘_thank you_’ over and over again as the attention shifts to other recipients.

No opportunity to read the letter arises until her shift is done and Eurydice curls up in her bunk, allowed a precious few moments of being alone with the lantern as she fumbles with the paper.

The letter inside is in a soft yellow hue, and she gives a soft exhale seeing Hermes’ seal and his familiar handwriting.

Hermes’ writes in a slightly apologetic tone, saying he rarely reaches out personally but that considering his involvement in the situation he felt the need. He tells that Orpheus is _fine_, he is alive and he works but he is so quiet – _the bar is empty without his singing, but who can fault him. _The letter informs that there is no hurry for Eurydice to respond – letters are such dangerous contraband, and even sending this was a risk.

Eurydice’s eyes well up and she smiles into her clenched fist, her chest hurts with joy and grief all at once. She lets her thumb rest at Hermes’ signature, and then when looking into the letter again spots a small paper tissue.

Lifting it up, she shudders in remembrance when finding that the tissue smells like the familiar perfume of the bar where Orpheus worked. When opening the parchment, Eurydice’s heart is instantly sent into her throat as she recognizes the angular writing belonging to her husband.

_Lover, I am well._

_I’m not alone; with my ear against the ground I still hear the workers sing our song._

_I can’t write too much and risk this being seen._

_I’ve kissed this paper two dozen times in hope one of them will reach you._

_I ache till we meet again._

It’s short, Orpheus’ square letters barely fit on the tissue. Contraband, she thinks, pressing the secret letter against her mouth and kissing it until she loses count.

***

Dawn is always signaled with the rise of a gargantuan false sun, a machine that hurts to look at and bathes the entire underworld in an orange light. This time of morning is always echoing with hammers, hums, metal and shouts.

But instead silence rings through the district, and Eurydice instantly knows that something is wrong. Trains of workers are crowded along the halls, hanging out of windows, all their eyes focused on the dim glass box where the foreman works.

“Who is it?” someone asks.

“The foreman’s foreman,” someone else jokes and is shoved.

“Is the box always this dark?”

“Nah, someone else’s in it.”

“He’s prob’ly gettin’ drunk again with–“

The door opens with a familiar harrowing creak and the foreman steps out. He motions for one of the higher ranked workers, a woman with wide shoulders, to approach. She meets him halfway up the stairs and he says something in her ear, and she nods in response then returns down to the crowd and to where Eurydice is standing.

“He asked for you,” the worker informs her.

“Who did?”

The entire room becomes deafeningly silent when the king of the underworld steps out of the foreman’s office and joins him on the metal platform.

The light of the entire gargantuan hall appears to shift and focus on Hades, a luminescent halo drawing around him in the way light and dark so often obeys around gods. Every set of eyes and every scrap of attention in the room is commanded by his presence: As human the gods may look, the mind and the heart can tell gods from mankind like a deer can pick out predators in the woods.

It is not uncommon for higher ranked overseers and directors to visit, but a visit from the king of Hell himself is unheard of.

The room is electric with tension.

Eurydice briefly wonders what would happen if she declined. If she refuses to walk up the metal stairs, would she be dragged up by force? Or would nothing happen, would she resume her day as usual?

_Best to not find out_, she thinks to herself and walks up the staircase. Every step on the metal platform echoes through the hall.

“Miss Eurydice, join me for tea,” Hades says and his face is changed by an awkward attempt to look perhaps welcoming. The tone implies it to be a request, and again Eurydice considers declining to see what would happen.

Instead she nods sweetly and joins at his side as he leads her to the steel elevator at the end of the platform, and as Hades pushes the button she looks over her shoulder.

Before stepping into the elevator, she briefly catches gaze of a hundred eyes watching her with morbid interest as she disappears.

In the corner of her eye, Eurydice is able to safely glance at Hades and try to read his expression. As intimidating as the ruler is, Eurydice doesn’t harbor the same level of fear of him. Having seen the god rendered emotional and teary eyed made him appear less frightening, less of an unavailable monolith.

It fills Eurydice with hope about her predicament, that she is meeting with a personhood she can see eye to eye with.

Despite the town being a cradle of industry and mechanism, the structures the elevator pass by are more reminiscent of basalt cathedrals and places of worship. Many of the buildings are entirely foreign to Eurydice, traversed by only a scarce few workers.

When seen from above, the underworld is quite beautiful in its own unique way. Steam and smoke rises from the angular buildings, lit up by spotlights so that they almost resemble fireworks. In the distance, several hundred feet tall machinery spins like attractions of some sort of bizarre theme park. It is not impossible to imagine that lady Persephone once could have fallen in love with this world.

The floors of Hadestown fly by at such speed that Eurydice isn't able to keep track of where they now are, or how far away she is from the barracks. A minute passes by quickly in the elevator, and then the metal doors open to a room that takes Eurydice a second to realize the theme of.

It is not the largest room to be found in Hadestown, but sizeable enough that the wall fits two windows that looks more like it belongs in a cathedral than an office.

When Eurydice signed away her soul so long ago, it was in a small dark office lit only by a lamp and Hades’ cigar. This is nothing like it – the vaulted church windows that allows for the golden light of the town to trickle in, the desk looks _homely_, cabins and pens.

“Have a seat,” Hades offers and motions to a leather chair. The absurdity of the situation makes Eurydice is unable to do anything but stare blankly at the king, who frowns back at her.

“Well then,” he says. “Do as you wish. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Hades walks along the wall of bookshelves and cabinets and leaves through a door in the corner of the room, and Eurydice is alone.

In the baffled state Eurydice is in, few things but thunder and rain underground would surprise her now.

Not a single reasonable explanation for her predicament appears. In her head, the closest thing to an explanation or comparison Eurydice finds herself able to make is host, with her being Hades’ guest. What this what fellow gods saw? Hermes, associates crawled out of the Abyss, and gods like Persephone who had been forged out of nature itself – did they see this?

It must make Eurydice one of precious few mortals to ever see Hades act in this way, a way someone foolishly might call _human_.

She sits down on the offered chair, and finds the seat to be thick welcoming leather. It smells earthy and warm, and Eurydice trails a nail along a scratch in the thick hide. It smells like something almost familiar.

When Hades returns, it is with a grey tin kettle in one hand and a bowl in the other. Eurydice finds herself unable to appear more shocked when she is given hot tea (it smells sickeningly saccharine) and the bowl is opened to contain biscuits (all of which look like intricately detailed wedding cakes from the big city, rather than decorated shortbread).

“I don’t know how old this is,” Hades tells her in a rumbling low voice, pointing at the tea with a sugar spoon. “A year at minimum. Damn hard getting food shipments here.”

It is all the encouragement Eurydice requires. The tea isn’t as boiling hot as anticipated, not at all too sweet but rich and nearly oily in taste.

All there is to eat in the mines and barracks is dry seeds and water, the occasional old fruit or dry meat. Nothing as sweet as this. Eurydice very nearly cries at the taste of real tea and the pale biscuits that crumble apart when bit.

Hades eats too, if sparingly. When he turns to look out the vaulted window, the light of the city catches in his eyes in a way truly inhuman. Just once, when Orpheus first had arrived, they had both been witness to the god’s eyes fuming smoke like chimneys.

_Is this an apology? _Eurydice thinks and takes another bite. She had been in furious tears when she fell back to the underworld, and each time she screamed she had been told the same thing: _there is nothing to be done_. The laws of sky, earth and abyss do not allow for another attempt – she was dead, and both above as below had mourned her. Fate was adamant.

But it was no secret that Persephone as well as Hades had wanted for them to succeed.Is that the reason why Eurydice is now in Hades’ office, taking part in the rare kindness of the god of the underworld?

“Why am I here?” Eurydice finally asks.

“Conversation,” Hades responds. “Talking is easier over a meal. It’s how diplomacy has worked since the dawn of time.”

“Conversation,” Eurydice repeats hollowly. “About what?”

“About what the city has become. And about you.” Hades jaw clenches in what looks to be deep contemplation. “When people say ‘the world is changing’, that rarely pertains to the underworld. We were for the most part exempt. You,” the hairs on the back of Eurydice’s neck prick up at the tone, “changed that. And that is why you are here.”

By the time Eurydice returns, her fellow workers had dreamt up nearly every possible scenario that could’ve happened to her, every idea more outrageous than the previous. That she had been transferred. That she had been brought upstairs for disciplinary action, for some sort of punishment. That the king’s longing for the overworld had grown so intense he had taken her as a paramour. That even the dead can disappear.

When she returns to the barracks they ask her in hushed nervous tones what happened. They hunger for information, bored by the repetition of work and lusting for every hint of excitement they can get (be it riots, fires, crime, gossip, or the king of Hell paying a visit).

Eurydice tells them what she is allowed, that nothing in particular happened, that they just talked. It isn’t a lie, but the workers around her still doubt her words as she explains that all they did was speak, as if they don’t consider it dramatic enough.

What Eurydice neglects to tell them is that she has been told of the molten heart of the city, about the false sun that rises above them, about the blue dust in the air that sometimes takes form in bird-like creatures. It was strangely enthralling, hearing Hades speak of the secrets of the city and the weaknesses in what she for so long has considered to be an impenetrable fortress of stone.

The reason Hades spoke to her was because of what he called a _business opportunity_.

***

Two weeks after that, Eurydice is called on again. This time Hades doesn’t come for her personally, but rather the foreman tells her and gives her the correct floor number before she enters the elevator.

As he Eurydice notices the slightest glimpse of _jealousy _in the foreman’s eye as she heads up.

The second time is similar to the first, and perhaps easier due to Eurydice knowing what to expect. The tea, the wafers, this time also bread with marmalade – and then they talk.

“You’ve heard of the riots, I presume,” Hades says and takes a bite out of a biscuit with blue glazing. Eurydice nods. “They didn’t use to happen. The last century has been rough. Changes in the city, in the people, in…”

He trails off and Eurydice finishes the sentence in her head. It’s like she has been told – the work wasn’t always as horrible as it was when she came to the underworld. Whatever Hadestown used to be, it became more of a hell when the two god’s marriage soured.

There is a quick moment of silence between them before Hades inhales through his nose and continues.

“But then, something changed. The riots increased, as expected, but now- there is something wrong with the very fabric of the underworld and it is _damn annoying_.”

“How do I fit into this?” Eurydice asks. After two rather close encounters with the god, the drawn out way he speaks and avoids directly saying things has began to make her impatient. Not impatient enough to act out of line, Hades still makes for a frightening figure, but enough for her to hurry the conversation.

Hades frowns and grimaces. Deep inside his mouth, Eurydice can spot teeth that are too sharp to belong to a human.

“Miss Eurydice, you are on the factory floor. The foremen can’t see everything, and neither can I. But you, the canary in the coal mine, hears every word.”

The word _spy _appears in Eurydice’s thoughts, but she does not say it aloud.

“I’ve returned things to the way they were. Kinder work, leniency, the way it was before personal _interference_. But still, it persists. Something has changed in the neath and now the entirety of the underground is in disarray.”

“Do you worry something is going to happen?” Eurydice asks and when Hades raises his head there is just the faintest pouring of smoke from his eyes.

“No,” he says firmly. “I’ve been here nearly as long as the sun itself. Few things surprise me at this point, and even less _worries _me. I do not _worry _about something that might happen – I am _irritated _with what has happened, and uncertain in how to fix it.”

In Eurydice’s mind, the word _spy _changes to _advisor_ and she has to wrestle down a triumphant sensation. Her help and her eyes needed to help a god, her character suddenly being of such high value – the god of the underworld is asking for her help.

It fills her with a mix of trilling victory and cold silent rage, because does he really not know?

Does he really not know what has happened, why it’s changed?

Or is he willfully ignorant?

***

Once when Eurydice returns to the barracks, she brings along food she’s managed to salvage from the meeting. Nothing grand and nothing too fine, and still when she hands the contraband out the workers wear smiles sweeter than honey.

Through a drawn out game of trade, Eurydice manages to get the tools to write a letter. A biscuit for two wax candles. One candle for a bottle of rainwater. The bottle for a jar of black ink, and the other candle for a primitive pen made out of scraps. Paper isn’t as difficult to find, she manages to locate a napkin and busily writes on it by lantern light and her bunkmates sleep, or at least pretend to be uninterested.

It has become easier to keep track of time in the underworld. Eurydice and Hades’ visits are roughly once every ten days. There is a massive cargo train that arrives twice a month, and once a month a copper-painted courier arrives to carry secret letters. No more letters arrive for Eurydice, and the courier (this time a gaunt man with hair like a flag) tells her that Hermes sending letters is near unheard of.

“Letters from and to workers, that’s easy business,” the courier says. “But letters signed by gods?The walking towers will hunt down a courier carrying god-sent papers instantly.”

Despite having no intents on sending the letter she is writing, Eurydice keeps the paper safe inside her pocket. It is doubtful the paper even would be considered a letter – rather than anything worthy of a letter, it instead is a list of types of trees and fruits.

By her third visit to Hades’ office, she has become familiar to the routine. The elevator, the office, and then twenty minutes of mellow conversation over tea.

Even if Eurydice would never voice it, she begins to think there is another reason for their meetings besides the king being apologetic; solitude. The towering buildings that loom over the city are so quiet, with only the distant echo of metal working and ones own steps. Very few people in Hadestown make for good company – the foremen are silent, the bosses are beings cut out of stone, the workers are suspicious, and individuals of higher standing tend to be inhuman.

It isn’t impossible to imagine that Hades is lonely.

Eurydice herself has a hard time to enjoy their talks, despite the food and the break from work. The work is simple – tasks, patience, things to be moved – but this? Their conversations are puzzling. It is impossible to work out what Hades truly wants (if he wants anything), and with her fear of the god having nearly faded, Eurydice finds herself almost irritated with the god.

“I’ve something to tell you,” she says and Hades looks up from the black notebook he is busy with.

“What is it?”

“The reason why things aren’t changing back to normal.” Hades raises his head, now interested, and there is something glittering in his eyes. Eurydice takes a breath to brace herself before speaking: even if Hades has become more familiar to her, she does not want to push the boundaries of their relation.

“It’s boredom. The town and its people have finally hit a wall in what they – in what _we _– can take. Endless work, day in and day out, with nothing to look forwards to.”

Hades scoffs.

“Young girl, it has been this way for millions of years. The underworld is unending, dangerous and empty – the _endless work _is all that there is to do. It makes no sense for boredom to occur only now.”

There is a pointed air to Hades’ tone. Eurydice bites the tip of her tongue in thought and rewords sentences in her head, figuring out the most polite way to word herself.

“That ain’t how people work. When you built this world, you must’ve expected that there eventually would be–“

“I did _not_ create this world,” Hades interrupts and the annoyance in his voice is clear now. His tone carries something deep and inhuman that makes Eurydice’s bones grind together, as if her very flesh is frightened. “I came to the underworld eons before the dawn of mankind, and even then the underground hummed its wretched symphony. Ruined factories and forgotten cities lived in by souls without purpose. The town, the work – it was here _long _before me.”

Hades’ eyes emit black smoke in a way not unfamiliar to the coal furnaces in the mines, and if not for having known the god a while Eurydice would definitely have been deterred.

“You didn’t create this city?”

“In the start? No. The underworld builds itself _ad infinitum_, a perpetual wasteland, and the city and the work keeps out whatever may lurk in the depths.” Hades smiles joylessly. “What do you think would happen without Hadestown? What would happen to all those souls?”

“Then why did you let it become this?” Eurydice replies and feels her voice rise. Hades raises an eyebrow in surprise.

“Excuse me?”

“‘_To find out what has changed_’ – do you really not know what has changed? The workers could endure this hell when they thought that was all it was, but now they know it could be better. Now they dream and long for better days, now there is purpose behind revolutions. Because you let your town become a prison.”

“It wasn’t always like _this_,” Hades defends himself almost snarling. “You’ve heard it from the seniors yourself, I–“

Eurydice then does something that a precious few people in all of existence has done; spurred on by the courage of the dead and the living, she stands up from her seat and interrupts Hades.

“How can you turn a world into this and then blame others?” she nearly shouts, gesturing to the great cathedral windows letting in light of the pandaemonium below them. “You did this yourself – how can powerful men _possibly _look at a world at their own making and wish it was different, knowing they could fix it yet refusing to? How can you look over your metal orchestra, knowing it ain’t right and knowing you could change it – and do _nothing?!_”

Complete silence falls between them.

The reality of the situation strikes, and fear comes in. Her heart hammers in her chest, and Hades stares at her in absolute silence with eyes like embers. Dread fills her lungs and for a second Eurydice considers apologizing, before firmly deciding against it.

There is nothing left that Hades could do to her, no further torture she has yet to endure. She has nothing to lose

“Miss Eurydice,” Hades then says in a low voice that acutely reminds Eurydice of what he truly is, “there are limits to my hospitality. Do not for a second mistake my leniency on you for kindness, and do not take me requesting your help as an invitation to insult me.”

Eurydice doesn’t respond. She isn’t sure if she even can, and Hades continues;

“I did not let it _become _this – you can thank your damn husband for that, as you yourself pointed out. ‘Dream of better days’, fine way to put it: it is a hunger. _Orpheus_,” he speaks the name like it is a curse, “didn’t just kiss you, he kissed the underworld itself, every beaten worker and every exhausted man. And now they want more.”

Hades stands up from his seat, more towering than usual and his face hidden by shadow so that can be made out are his eyes. He turns around without another world, stood by the window with his back turned and made an unapproachable silhouette of black and white.

“You have no idea what to do,” Eurydice finally says softly and sees Hades’ frame briefly twitch, but he does not respond.

“The underworld is changing and you don’t know what to do about it,” she adds with the carefulness of someone walking on glass. “Is that why I’m here? Advice for what to do when your wife isn’t here?”

“_Don’t you have work to do_?” Hades says in a tone that leaves no room for arguing, making the hairs on Eurydice’s arms stand tall. Every nerve in her body is frayed and panicked, and only through an immense effort does she remember to place the secret letter on the desk.

She leaves his office without a word.

***

Two days pass before Eurydice is called upon again. Out of all things to happen so far, it is the early date that truly makes Eurydice’s blood run cold. If there’s anything she’s learned about Hades it is that he is timely and organized, hating when things run late or arrive early.

It makes her uncertain as to what to expect, but when she has come this far she refuses to grow scared only now.

When she arrives to the office, Hades is stood in the middle with her letter in both hands. For a second, Eurydice is completely paralyzed. Hades lifts the letter in question, and there is nothing unusually antagonistic in his frowning face.

“It’s a list. A list of plants for a garden,” she explains in one breath.

“A garden,” he repeats. “Gardens are for golden chain trees, magnolias, bleeding-hearts and poppies.” He gestures to the letter and reads aloud, “_Apples, pomegranates_ and _plums_ – those are plants fit for an orchard.”

“We called it a garden where I’m from,” Eurydice says, thinking of the nature outside her and Orpheus’ old farmhouse. “We had mostly apple trees and plums. Not a lot of flowers – you can’t eat magnolias.”

Hades leans his head back as if in deep thought.

“The dead don’t need to eat,” he then states. “A food garden would be redundant. If the workers need to eat, there are rations allowed.”

It takes a great amount of effort for Eurydice to not instantly spiral into despair but instead remain determined. When she has come this far and waited this long, there is a line thin as a knife’s edge between giving up and stubbornness.

“Mister Hades,” Eurydice retorts without sounding pleading, “all there is to eat here is dried seeds and bread that tastes like dust. If you want the workers to stop knocking at revolutions door, we need something to look forwards to.”

Hades tuts against his teeth and holds up the letter like it is a prop. “That below hungers for that above, and you suggest to quite literally _feed _it? Rather than to stomp out this madness, to instead encourage it?”

“You _can’t_ stop this. Things ain’t going back to normal. Nothing’s changing back to how it was,” Eurydice pauses to swallow thickly. There is a familiar weeping feeling crawling up her throat at the realization that once and for all, nothing will change.

There is no second chance for her – she’s dead. This is all there is now.

She will not cry. She refuses to cry.

“Instead of hoping things will return to how they were, it’s best we change as well,” Eurydice finishes quietly. “It’s all we can do.”

The office becomes completely quiet. Neither of them speak, and Eurydice almost considers leaving through the elevator before Hades gives a single contemplative _hm._

“I can’t make any promises,” Hades says. “The cargo train is coming next week. That is all I can say.”

***

The cargo train arriving bi-monthly is one of the few interesting things to happen in the underworld. The workers that are able to make time crowd around to at least get a glimpse of what new things have been brought from the surface, if it still smells like grass and sunlight.

This months order is made up largely out of wooden crates, each of which are small enough to be carried one by one. _Food_, most of the workers say as they smell it. Something earthy and something sweet.

Despite the tightly packed wooden planks and the security of the crates, a single stone of a plum manages to make its way out and fall between the cracks of the metal railing. No one notices it in the stress of carrying off the other crates, and the pits and seeds were counted in weight rather quantity.

They only find out about the missing plum a week later, when there are reports of leaves growing through the metal grid of the train platforms.

The garden itself grows at a similar unnatural speed. Maybe it is the rich dirt of the underground, maybe it is the false suns they hang above the garden – either way, the grass and the trees grow at a completely unforeseen speed.

The garden is only an acre large, and the fruits it produces would be nowhere near enough to feed even a fraction of the underworld. It quickly becomes the target of traffic, workers and foremen planning their days so that they can happen to walk past the garden. Surprisingly few beg to taste its fruits, surprisingly many are satisfied only with looking at it and inhaling its scent.

Something has changed, and when every worker and the underworld itself falls asleep there is a soft warm feeling in each of their chests; the foolish notion of hope for better days.

***

When Hades wakes up, he instantly knows she is here. Even with the garden and the false suns changing the air of the underworld, he can tell she is here.

It’s not something that mortals necessarily can feel, but something Hades and other gods can tell clear as day. The stygian light bending itself, a living gloria and a humming sound that he feels rather hears: Persephone has arrived.

There has been a few times where she has arrived uncalled for, driven by own whim and perhaps some sort of desire to win a game only she knows the rules of.

He finds her in the garden, walking around it without any particular purpose and arching her head to look up high into the outrageously tall apple trees. It is a familiar scene, but not one Hades ever could’ve imagined himself to see beneath the surface of the world.

Before he can call out to her, Persephone looks over her shoulder to meet him.

“I almost thought I got off on the wrong station,” she calls out and gives a little scoff. “Thought that the train had driven in a circle, because why else would it smell like plums? A garden in hell – didn’t expect that.”

She looks up at one of the false suns with the lazy interest of a cat. The light they emit is too reddish and too much like fire to pass for sky, but the plants appreciate it either way.

“You’re early,” Hades says. Persephone smiles at him with only one corner of her mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> In the end, this fic became weirdly optimistic and self reflecting for me. Thank you for reading this adventure in which I accidentally worldbuilded hell and mostly just wanted to write Eurydice and that old man talking. 
> 
> _"One Wednesday morning, as Eurydice begins her shift, the entire underworld comes to a halt when an echoing song suddenly breaks out miles away and enthralls them all […] It is the most somber yet beautiful choir any of them have ever heard and in a language none of them recognize, with the brightest tones and the lowest tones carrying the furthest."_
> 
> The song envisioned was [this, or at least something very close to it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Poc3MF8GFk)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] tea for the canary](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20595275) by [stardust_podfics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_podfics/pseuds/stardust_podfics)


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